I find it interesting to come across this language of modern conviviality and simple colloquialism in a poem written around 150 years ago. That is how it is about Dickinson. The snake in the grass is here no snake in the grass but a narrow fellow, one of nature’s own people whom the poet knew (and who knew her).She has never met this fellow without tighter breathing and zero at the bone. A narrow fellow who slithers in the grass that parts as though he is a comb parting hair.

Cut out all that talk about sexual fancies and Freudian references .Look at the thought beneath the poem as plain anthropomorphism, if you please.